This page gives information about Dr Herring's paper. For copyright reasons
only the Introduction and Conclusion are reproduced here. Full copies
are available on request from the author, or can be found in the journal Review
of International Studies, vol. 28 no. 1 (January 2002), pp.39-56.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place:A Critique of the British Government's Narrative on UN Economic
Sanctions

Full paper published in Review of International Studies
vol. 28 no. 1 (January 2002), pp.39-56.

INTRODUCTION

The British government has been the key player along with the United States
in keeping in place UN Security Council economic sanctions on Iraq. How does
the British government under Prime Minister Tony Blair justify that policy?
This is the central question I address. From the imposition of sanctions up
to mid-1997, approximately 720,000 deaths occurred in Iraq beyond the normal
rate. The deaths have hit children disproportionately because they are less
able to cope with chronic malnutrition, polluted water and lack of proper medical
care. The question continues to be a pressing one, as Iraqis continue to die
in vast numbers and many times more who survive will have their lives shortened
and their health blighted irreversibly. The question is also particularly relevant
as Blair's New Labour government claims to have introduced an ethical dimension
to British foreign policy and a doctrine of international community so that
it is meant to be informed by something more than realpolitik. I propose criteria
for assessing narratives; I outline the narrative upon which the British government
relies to justify the sanctions on Iraq; and I point to many of the uncomfortable
silences in, and counters to, the British government's narrative. My argument
is that, when these silences and counters are taken into consideration, the
British government's narrative and its denial of any responsibility for the
devastation of Iraqi society become very difficult to sustain. I develop a counter-narrative
in which ordinary Iraqis are suffering due to the policies of both the UN Security
Council and the Iraqi government rather than the latter alone. However, I argue
that one's weighting of their relative responsibility for that suffering is
a product of one's values and interpretations rather than of the gathering of
facts alone. I conclude with an assessment of the policy debate regarding the
sanctions.

[see note at top of this page]

CONCLUSION

The British government's narrative asserts that Iraq has not complied with
the relevant UN resolutions; Iraqi non-compliance is the reason why sanctions
are in still in place; Iraq refused for years to accept an offer to allow it
to sell oil to buy humanitarian supplies; Iraq is now allowed to buy humanitarian
supplies freely; the Iraqi government is choosing to withhold medical supplies;
and conditions are much worse in Baghdad-controlled central and southern Iraq
than in the UN-controlled north due to the policies of Saddam Hussein. I have
developed a counter-narrative which is superior by the criteria indicated at
the outset and which runs as follows: that partial compliance has not been rewarded
with partial relaxation of sanctions; Iraqi incentives to comply are undermined
further by the way that the United States has made it clear, in violation of
the relevant UN resolutions, that it wants to retain sanctions in the hope that
they will lead to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein even if Iraq does comply;
for a long time there was little evidence that the oil sales programme would
provide significant amounts of humanitarian supplies; Iraq's attempts to purchase
humanitarian supplies are often obstructed by members of the Sanctions Committee;
problems in the distribution of medical supplies are due to less sinister reasons
within Iraq and also due to problems caused by the Sanctions Committee; and
conditions are much worse in the centre and south because the sanctions have
been much harsher there. Saddam Hussein has been prepared to sacrifice ordinary
Iraqis in his efforts to survive and beyond that to bring about the lifting
of economic sanctions without giving up weapons banned by the UN, and the British
government has been willing to sacrifice them in its efforts to limit his capabilities
to acquire those weapons, to make him renounce them or even to overthrow him.
Although a precise calculation of relative degree of responsibility cannot be
made, the Iraqi people are being ground to pieces in a power struggle, caught
between Iraq and a hard place.

Narratives involve implicit or explicit values as well as interpretations.
The British government has been attempting to limit Iraq's military capability
in ways which involve depriving Iraq's civilian population of many of the means
necessary to survival. The British government has tried to defend its policy
morally by trying to shift all blame to the Iraqi regime. But many of its supporting
claims have been problematic. For the means to have been proportionate in this
case, the threat must be truly apocalyptic, and the British government's narrative
hypes the threat with statements such as 'Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq produced
enough chemical and biological weapons material to kill the world's population
several times over.' This is true only in the ludicrous scenario of everyone
standing still while a tiny drop is administered to them individually.

In spite of all the suffering, the British government has failed to achieve
its objectives. If the goal was overthrowing Saddam Hussein, he is still there.
Indeed, the sanctions may be reinforcing his position, by feeding Iraqi nationalism
and vengeful anti-Westernism, encouraging even more corruption, making Saddam
Hussein seem less vile than the West to many Iraqis, requiring a rationing system
which allows the Iraqi state to monitor even more closely most Iraqis, and undermining
the civil society which might provide the best hope for a more humane successor
government. If the goal was arms inspections without sanctions, that has not
been achieved. We have the opposite - sanctions without arms inspections. The
approach of Britain and the United States seems to be to prolong as long as
possible the deadlock in the Security Council that keeps the sanctions in place,
even though the sanctions have failed. Some who think that Iraq is extremely
dangerous, including former members of UNSCOM Tim Trevan of Britain and Ritter
of the United States, are in favour of dropping the sanctions and launching
a US-led UN war to remove Saddam Hussein and transform the Iraqi political system.
There is virtually no chance of this happening. The second option being considered
is offering to lift the sanctions and allow full-scale foreign investment in
return for a much more limited degree of (probably ineffective) disarmament
monitoring than in the past. This is favoured by France, Russia and China (and
is Ritter's fall-back option). The United States and Britain say this is unacceptable,
and Iraq wants the sanctions lifted unconditionally and immediately, though
either might in the end decide to go for this middle option. The third possibility
is that the sanctions system will collapse and Iraq will get what it wants -
no sanctions and no monitoring. The chances are that the world will have to
learn to live with an Iraq with renewed NBC weapon and missile programmes. Fortunately,
chemical and especially biological weapons are very hard to deliver to their
targets in a way that will inflict significant casualties or do so with any
reliability. Their military value can be minimised by counter-measures and their
political value might be minimised by education about their limited killing
power. Nuclear weapons are vastly more effective at killing, and can be delivered
more reliably on missiles, aircraft or other systems. Some reassurance can be
drawn from the fact that nuclear weapons are relatively difficult to produce,
and with much more seriousness about export controls than in the past it could
take Iraq many years to acquire any. Whatever the outcome with regard to disarmament
and monitoring, the British government's narrative on sanctions merely serves
to prop up a failed policy which is inflicting terrible costs on the Iraqi people.